Zillow, an online real estate database company, allows anyone anywhere to look up estimates on homes, including sale prices and mortgage payments.
The site lists Zestimates for each property, or Z
. The company says a Zestimate, which is "automatically computed based on millions of public and user-submitted data points," is a "starting point in determining a home's value and is not an official appraisal."
Zillow's CEO Spencer Rascoff recently purchased a 12,732-square-foot, six-bedroom, nine-bathroom house in Los Angeles for a little less than $20 million, while the site had estimated the home's price at $18.4 million,
reported.
A headline on the
implied that Rascoff had "overpaid" for the house.
According to other media reports, a home that Rascoff recently put on the market in Seattle, where Zillow is headquarted, sold for $1.1 million --
,
reported, and a difference of about 40 percent.
A spokesperson for Zillow provided a statement in an email:
"The accuracy of Zillow's home estimates is well publicized," said Emily Heffter, PR specialist. "The published error rate for homes in that area is about 5 percent -- the difference between what Rascoff paid and the Zestimate is about 7 percent."
Isn't this ironic? Zillow's CEO overpaid for his Los Angeles home, according to Zillow https://t.co/RUb9kK6LOo pic.twitter.com/aEzrjnCB07
— Curbed LA (@CurbedLA) July 12, 2016
Zillow CEO
— Westside Real Estate (@MrWestside_com) July 12, 2016
Overpaid for His #Brentwood #Home (by $1 million +), according to Zestimate! https://t.co/UKqnrjLOQN pic.twitter.com/PvXHFMaXa5
Cox Media Group